


A Stranger's Gift

by SaintEpithet



Series: Sons of Fire - Beric & Thoros Oneshots [1]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Episode: s07e07, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Missing Scene, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-22 13:10:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11968092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaintEpithet/pseuds/SaintEpithet
Summary: Sometimes Beric dreams.Sometimes Beric remembers.But when Beric awakes, he always forgets.





	A Stranger's Gift

Sometimes Beric dreams.

Sometimes Beric remembers.

But when Beric awakes, he always forgets.

 

Most nights are dreamless and when Beric closes his eye, there is nothing but darkness, black as the starless sky. Most nights could as well be deaths, with their nothingness and emptiness that never truly seems to last. By day, Beric has scattered pieces of a life before the Red God, fragmented memories of the man he once was. They have less meaning every time Thoros brings him back. At first, it was the inability to put names to faces, not recognizing places he had been to before. Then, the pieces were less and less connected; his life through a kaleidoscope, a stranger's tale told by a hundred different distant friends.

But some nights, Beric remembers it all. The Red Mountains of his home, his father's voice, the way the summer wind felt in the Stormlands, his first tournament, his mother's lullabies, the maester's stories of old, the salty taste of the air by the shores, the sunlight falling on the black basalt walls of Blackhaven, what it was like to be alive; truly alive. Those dreams, rare as they may be, are even beyond the reach of the Red God. Uncharted waters in the night, and no Lord of Light could find the safe haven of a man who never truly believed in the god that brought him back from the darkness time and time again.

Beric dreams, for the first time since Thoros died beyond the wall. He is standing on the battlements of Blackhaven, high above the valley. The sky is fiery; bright red and deep orange fading into a dusky purple where the sun sets behind the silhouette of the mountain range. He is a knight of summer; without the scars, without the years, without the darkness. And this time, he is not alone in the dream. There is an old woman, only a few steps away by the tower, and he does not remember her. Her face looks so familiar, Beric is certain he once knew her. And he fears the Red God has found his last refuge, has taken the memories his mind kept hidden away under the cover of night. His mother's first handmaiden? A nanny, passed away before he was old enough to truly remember?

“Who are you?” he hears himself ask.

And when she answers, he knows it is not the Lord of Light who found him here.

“No-one,” she says, her voice crackling under the weight of her age.

“Why have you come here?” Beric asks, though he has a premonition, one he both fears and welcomes.

Her wrinkly old hand, pale, with veins thick and knotty like the roots of a weirwood tree, briefly brushes over that strange yet familiar face. In her place, a little boy stands, no older than 10, with lively green eyes and brown hair, freckles sprinkling his full cheeks. Beric knows this face; the stablemaster's son he used to play with as a boy.

“I have always been here,” the boy says. His voice is calm, devoid of any youthfulness or age; he does not explain, he states. Behind him, night falls and stars twinkle across the clear sky.

“Why do you show yourself now?” Beric asks. “You are not the god I serve.”

The boy laughs, just for a moment, then he is gone and where he stood before, the Mountain now stands. His armor is stained and scratched, his face not hidden under a helmet and bearing more scars and stitches than Beric's body by day.

“Is that what you think?” he asks.

“Death is the enemy," Beric replies. His words are firm, but his eyes betray a heart that has stopped beating six times before. “You have no place here.”

The Mountain's face contorts, at first Beric doesn't realize the disfigured shapes would be a smile on another man's face. An armor-clad hand brushes over the grimace and then there's Catelyn Stark.

“It is all you have left,” she says. “The promise to bring death, given to a dead man.”

“I have a purpose,” Beric echoes what Thoros used to tell him, what he came to believe, reluctantly, more and more each time he died. And yet it never felt true. It still doesn't. Maybe it will with the next death, but right now, it is nothing but lip service to a god he does not understand.

“You had purpose before,” Catelyn says and then she is gone, and it is Thoros standing in her place. “You were Lord of Blackhaven. These were your lands, your people, and the Red God has taken it all from you.”

Beric has to remind himself that Thoros is dead, that he is not really here, that these are words Thoros would never have said. He never understood why the Lord of Light had cursed him with a gift he thought he didn't deserve, but he never doubted that there was a reason, a purpose, and it would one day reveal itself.

“Was it worth losing your life, your home, your memories?” Thoros continues. “When you wake from this dream, you will be no-one once more, a stranger in your own lands, even to yourself.”

“And yet I have lost nothing,” Beric replies. “My purpose has always been the same, if I knew it or not.” And for the first time, it feels true, he realizes. For the first time, his voice carries the conviction Thoros always had, unwavering in his blind faith. “I was always meant to walk this path. How can I question my purpose if not even death can stand in my way?”

Thoros smiles and nods and takes a swig from his wine. “And so I won't,” he says. “Farewell, old friend.”

Then Thoros is no longer there. Now there is no-one. The Stranger has become truly a stranger. His face is bland and devoid of memorable features, but he still smiles. And then he turns away, fading more and more with every step he takes, until Beric is alone on the battlement again.

The cold dawn of Eastwatch seeps through the walls of the dream, tries to wake Beric, but not yet, he thinks, not yet. He breathes the morning air, with lungs not pierced by blades and spears. He feels light summer rain, on skin not scarred from death and hardship. He takes in the view across the valley, through unclouded eyes, - both eyes. This is the stranger's gift to him. The certainty that this moment is the last, that he will never see these lands again, not even in the realms of night. The time to say farewell, to everything he sacrificed.

 

Sometimes Beric dreams.

Sometimes Beric remembers.

And just once, he opens his eye and does not forget. 


End file.
